My Favorite Wrestlers Ever: Announcement and Honorable Mention

He frightens small children, and for that, I own his shirt

For those who don't keep track, this is post number #2,500 for The Wrestling Blog. In honor of reaching that plateau, I'm going to roll out a top 25 list of my favorite wrestlers of all-time. I did this for my then-current favorites last year, but that was all in one post. This list will be rolled out in the style that I did the Wrestler of the Decade posts back in Aught-Nine.

The list will be compiled by my own arbitrary standards, because DUH, it's a favorite wrestlers list. If I had objective criteria, then it wouldn't be a "favorite" list now, would it? I will say that the standing on this list will be geared not towards how I feel about the person now completely, but towards my admiration of their work and how I felt about them at certain times in my life.

So, without further ado, here are the ten wrestlers/entities who didn't make it but almost did. My honorable mentions:

- Sara del Rey is the first one I'd like to mention. She's also the only woman to appear here, so that means she's my favorite female in wrestling history. That's more a reflection on how poorly women have been treated in wrestling than it is my fandom of the artform. Still, the Queen of Wrestling kicks major ass.

- The Eliminators, Perry Saturn and John Kronus, were an ECW staple for me. ECW had a lot of really good tag teams with their own unique flair, and the low-down, dirty ass-kicking of these two really exemplified that for me. Plus, TOTAL ELIMINATION.

- Ric Flair is in this category, most likely because I wasn't exposed to his greatness all that much until the mid-'90s. Hey, I was a WWF kid growing up. Don't shoot me!

- One of my favorite current wrestlers is the high-flying Evan Bourne, a guy who wows me every time he's in the ring nowadays. This is true even if he's not doing a high spot. The guy knows how to sell and be enthusiastic. Those are two great qualities.

- Chuck Taylor frightens little kids and throws grenades. Plus I own his t-shirt. How could he not be at least in the honorable mentions?

- This is a really old school guy who is listed for stuff he did in the later years of his career. Bob Backlund's clean cut, white bread babyface run was way before my time, but when he came back in the early '90s as the kooky old-man psychopath, he had me hooked. Plus I'm a mark for the crossface chicken wing.

- As a fan of comedic wrestling and podcasting, Colt Cabana sates my needs for both. He's awesome at both, and he's a cool dude to boot.

- Mr. Perfect was always a guy I liked for what he could do in the ring, even if I was compelled to root against him as a young fan. He and Bret Hart were guys who made me the fan I am today in some respects. Plus, I always wanted to pull for him, so that run against Shawn Michaels in 1993 was certainly a high point in my life as a fan.

- The Osirian Portal, the time-traveling Egyptian tag team, is on here mainly because they're a time-traveling Egyptian tag team. Very fun tag team who always worked entertaining matches and were able to weave dancing into the foray. I'm gonna miss Amasis a whole lot.

- Finally, the Woo Woo Woo Kid himself, Zack Ryder, rounds this honorable mention section out. I hate to pull the wrestling hipster card on all y'all, but I liked him even before he blew up Youtube. WWWYKI.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography